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The Shape Test

Well it was Thom to the rescue again...I guess I get to his update before anyone else, and this is about all I can do today for a blog post. Like everyone else who commented on his blog, I am skilled. *grin* I guess that is the best I can do for the shape I'm in....and I've had plenty of time to become skilled.

You Are Skilled

You are balanced and competent. You value harmony. Other people see you as outgoing, hyper, and even a bit overwhelming. Your ideal romantic relationship is unconventional, wild, and very public. You do best in tasks that require you to be flexible, creative, and playful.

The Shape Test

Monday Crazy Questions

1. what would you say is your biggest blessing ?
Having had the opportunity to bear and rear three children and to have a husband who loves me. Oh who am I kidding, the biggest blessings are indoor plumbing and a/c.

2. do you shop on line...Home goods or personal items?
Can you tell us what personal items you look for??
I buy too much stuff at Amazon...mainly books and cds, and that is as personal as it gets. I have bought my daughter stuff at Sur La Table.

3. Name a song from your past that you have always loved. what year was it recorded?
"Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones released in December 1969




4. If you found out there was a pedophile living in your neighborhood, would you take any action or ignore the fact??
I'd keep an eye on him/her and I think pedophiles have to let the neighbors around him/her know what they have done. If you mean they have been convicted and are out.
If there was no conviction, and they were doing something to kids, I'd call the police asap.


5. If you could live in any city In the USA...what would it be.
Somewhere in Hawaii, but probably not Oahu...maybe on Maui...or maybe Oahu

6. what is the one city you wouldn't live in even if you were paid to!?
Death Valley!!!

7. If you were strapped for cash would you ask a parent or sibling for money?
I guess, but my siblings probably wouldn't have money to lend. Parents are gone.

8. what is your most favorite thing to do to relax when you are not working?
gardening, watching tv or reading a book.

Thanks so much for joining us at MONDAY CRAZY QUESTIONS where Lani leaves questions for you to ponder and answer. Please join us every week and leave your link in MR Linky on her site to tell us where your answers are. Leave a COMMENT also, that you have participated in this weeks theme.

ps-I just saw on yahoo news that Gale Storm died. Details at New York Times.

pps-I think I was feeling sort of funky this morning with all the Stones stuff and all...but I do like them. They look older than me and most of the world, but they are still going....unbelivably.

Time for me to get ready to go to my knitting group. Interesting I didn't put that down as something I like to do when relaxing.

Life in the fast lane

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It's been really one thing after another around here. My fil has had to go to the emergency room twice this weekend. I can't see any way they can continue to live on their own. Neither has the ability to remember anything for five minutes which can be really a freaky thing when it comes to taking their meds. I feel so sorry for them, but it seems the time has come. My hubby is at the hospital with his dad and has asked the staff to put him in touch with a social worker....preferably one that won't tell them what a good thing it is they are still able to live alone. That is what the last one told them. I thought my poor husband was going to faint.

On the vacation front...well, maybe next year. If we get them settled into somewhere they are safe and are cared for we still couldn't leave because of the cat. If it ain't one thing it is another.

Our youngest daughter who lives here in Fort Worth told us yesterday afternoon that she will be moving to another city south of here...nearly to Houston. It will be a lateral move for her, but will get her in a really good position for advancement. We will miss her so much.

The tv is finally fixed and it is supposed to be only 98 today instead of 103. That is known as a Texas cool front. That is the good news....small as it is.

Stealing from Thom

There is always something good to steal over at Thom's, but he is going to be moving his blogs around in the next few days or I'd give him a linkback right here. Otherwise his link is on the sidebar.

It has been a busy week. The dreaded Tuesday has come and gone...thank goodness. Our tv, the big giant HD marvel I love so dearly went out last Saturday. While I was trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with it I pushed the off button and it spoke to me. I first thought it said, "I'm not working." To which I replied "No kidding!" Later in the handbook it said if the lamp was out the tv voice thingy would say "Lamp not working." Which makes a lot more sense than an uppity tv telling me it isn't going to work while I'm home alone with not that much to do.

We had bought this marvel at Circuit City two years ago and after a wrangle with my husband over the extended warranty we bought it. Now Circuit City has gone out of business and has no website and their phones don't work. Nada. So, I called my husband who was in the middle of Galveston Bay fishing in what sounded like a hurricane and the reception was sort of iffy, too. He told me to get the phone book and call TV repair places to find out what to do about our warranty. I thought that was akin to throwing darts at the phone book, so I went to the internet. I called this lovely lady who was either in India or had moved here and she told me the name of the company and called them for me to set up an appointment for them to come fix the lamp. She thought the not working thing was funny, too. The appointment time was Tuesday from 8-noon. It came and went and no tech. Hubby was nearly crazy after talking to all the people I'd talked to before and some others. I was whiney..because, well it was Tuesday and I felt like throwing up most of the day.

Today the repairman came and put the lamp in the tv and it works like it used to, but I think maybe better. He was from Vietnam and had a leg prosthesis. He was probably really glad hubby had moved the "bridge" off the towers where the tv lives. It might have been sort of hard for him to do on his own. I would have asked what happened but didn't really want to get that involved to maybe find out he had lost his leg during the war or something. He and his wife have moved to Texas from Washington DC and they love it here. She has asthma and needed to get to a drier climate her doctor told her. Personally I think she should go to a really good allergist and get tested for what she is really allergic to. Ya'll couldn't tell I was born in the South, now could you? I think I showed remarkable restraint in asking too many personal questions.

Anyway, back to Thom and the thing I stole from him...my hair was blonde when I was a little girl, but she looks pretty good to me. Thanks Thom...I really didn't have much tonight. Good luck with the move.

Your Hillbilly Name Is: Sandra Dee Birmingham

Ain'tcha got one better'n that un

Hillbilly Name Generator

Kitty Confusion

Kitty is confused at this point, but later threw it away like whoever had it before her.

My Daddy Really Was the Milkman one more time

Since there is nothing new regarding my dad, I'd like to post this again. My dad was so goofy, and I will miss him now and forever.

If we have become friends since last Father's Day, now you will know why I am the way I am. I just noticed that this isn't where it used to be...last father's day. So, that is why your comments are a year old.

In the interest of “keeping it real” my dad really was the milkman.

Just found out my middle name is Dianna and not Dianne as I’d been told all my life by my mother and as it is listed on all records. I accessed my Family Tree Maker to see just how much older my dad was than my mother and found one of those little leaves that says there is more information about that person in some record. Well, this leaf was by my name and it was the official Texas birth records, by golly. It seems my dad had told me in the past…long long ago in a time that was so different that my name was Dianna…and I’d always wanted to be named Dianna…the huntress. Actually that would be Diana, but close enough. That was my private little dream. There was more that I had messed up about that whole deal…I thought Diana’s father was Zeus and she sprang fully formed from his brow, but that was Athena. Oh well. I got my dad and he wasn’t as moody as the other “gods”. My dad was hardly one of the ancient gods and I was hardly the huntress, but the bond was there all the same.

He was a different kind of guy. He was for the most part a happy man. He drove my mother to distraction while they were married and the final straw was when he used all of their leather rations during World War II for a pair of boots for her, because they would last a really long time. To clarify some…my mother was from an upper middle class family and used to nice clothes and shoes, and my father, not so much. Anyway the whole boot debacle on top of having me was just too much for her to continue with the marriage. So she obtained a divorce hoping to resume her life as it had been before, but that is another story.


My dad drank a bit…well, he drank a lot from time to time. One year he disappeared off my radar when I was just a little girl around 7 or 8 or so. He told me he had been sent to Saudi Arabia on some military mission….or oil deal, it was a big secret mission he was on. From time to time I would get letters and I always looked for the postmark from “over there”. Not sure I found anything on the envelope, though. Many, many years later after his stroke, which fortunately…or not sometimes, didn’t affect his speech, he told me he had been drinking that year and that was why he hadn’t been around.


The thing I take from that and I had been around him many times when he drank…he never got violent or mean. He laughed and told stories and I think that goes to character. He had a lot. He would from time to time run into the ditch at my grandmother’s house when he came home from a night of drinking. We could tell how drunk he had been by how far he missed the driveway the night before. All of the family lived in a two room house. I have no idea how they managed. My grandparents slept in a bed in the front room and I slept on a sofa, when I was there, in the same room as the grandparents and the other room was the kitchen. The bathroom was outside the back door…sort of like an outhouse that flushed right outside on the back porch. All I can think of is he slept in the yard on a cot or at his brother’s house next door, which wasn’t much bigger and there were more people, but I never remember him coming in at night and raising a ruckus. I knew what that was all about in my mother’s house with that set of grandparents.


Some of my happiest times with him were laying on an old Army cot in the yard looking at the sky and he would tell me about the stars. I have no idea how he knew the constellations, for he had no formal education. However, I never questioned it. I remember him telling me how he would leave school after getting there. That must have happened a lot because my mother used to tell me she would go in one door and out the other at the school. All the while telling me how she would kill me if I did such a thing. Anyway, I think my dad had what is now called ADD. He was a very intelligent man in some ways, but had difficulty learning in a formal setting. He could learn anything from a book and spent many hours in the public library not reading fiction, he made a big deal out of that. He preferred to be roaming the countryside running in the fields with my Uncle Buck. Or it just could have been he didn’t have the proper clothes to go to school. He would have been too proud to tell me that and my grandmother probably wouldn’t have thought of it. She wasn’t mother of the year ever, but was wonderful in my eyes.


During the Depression he went to a CCC camp. That was a program set up by President Roosevelt called the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was established in 1933 during a very hard time for folks. He was born in 1918 and would have been 15 when The Depression started so he must have beeen during his late teens when he went to the CCC. The task was to build shelters in National Parks. He told me he really liked it and the food was good. Personally, I think my grandmother sent him to this program to keep him alive. There was very little money or jobs during that time. He was the youngest of the three children, and my grandfather had a difficult time finding work during that time. During this past year I found out that there was a salary for CCC workers. He probably sent money home to help out his parents.


He really was a milkman and before that he had a coffee delivery route. The coffee route took him up to Amarillo and up in the panhandle of Texas, I think. He told me about it once, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. He began his milkman career in home delivery and eventually advanced to a commercial route. He was very responsible, if there was a run on milk, cream, or eggnog at the grocery stores especially during the holidays he dropped everything as soon as he got the call and went to the dairy for a “hotshot”, meaning he got it out there asap. The whole family went, because it was fun and it had to be done.

It was hard work and he took me with him on the route from time to time. I was very proud to be with him when that happened. His customers would make over me and tell me what a fine guy my dad was. Probably it was my weekend to be with him and nobody could take care of me that day…again, it goes to his character about how he handled his work and life.


He joined the Army right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but was injured during basic training by an injury to his knee from running into a screen door at the camp. It was terrible for him to have to leave and to be be 4F during the war when everyone in his unit was killed in Corregidor. He actually made up stories about being in the Pacific during the war and he may have been a civilian worker in Hawaii. I remember seeing pictures of him with some of his buddies in a tropical setting. Some of the pictures where taken on ships with guys sitting on the really big guns. I’m not at all clear about that time, because I wasn’t around yet. Some of the pictures of camp life might have been from boot camp before he was injured. Anyway, he met and married my mother and the result was me being born in 1944, so he had to have been back in Texas then. He died in 1996 and I was never really able to get the complete story of his life before he died. I wish I’d started asking sooner.

After the whole boot debacle and divorce from my mother and all he lived at home with his mother and step father, who was a very good man and my dad loved him. He named his son for him. Dad married a woman named Frances, who was nice to me and him, I guess, but that didn’t last too long. He met Mary later and after he asked me what I thought of her, he asked her to marry him. She did and they had three children. They have many more memories of him than I do…and I hope they are as happy as mine are.


He was and always will be my star gazer and those were the flowers I insisted be at his funeral. He loved life and he loved me. One can’t ask for more.


Above is a picture of a star gazer lilly my cousin brought over one night that got me thinking about all of the times I had with my dad. I'll plant it in our garden and think of him when it blooms...and probably more often. As of today, June 20, 2009 it hasn't bloomed yet. It has a bud on it, but no bloom yet. I just thought...my dad's nickname was Buddy.

Happy Fathers' Day to all the dads out there. You never know what kind of a legacy you may be leaving with your children.

Chinese Swan Lake

Birthday Pix

Or try this if the slideshow won't load http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v170/AmberStar/?action=view&current=fe35668b.pbw

My younger brother's birthday

I've NO idea what is up with the date thing on my camera! Time warp of three years and six months and some change. Hmmm..

Yesterday was my brother's birthday. For many years we weren't really very close, because of the age difference. He is six months older than my oldest daughter....so, we didn't have a lot in common. We sort of got aquainted when our grandmother had to go to a nursing home, and we talked more and got closer when our dad was in a nursing home. He was still too young to deal with that much hassle. I was too young for that much hassle...and I don't think I could deal with that much hassle again now!

He has grown into a very good man and I'm proud to know him, as well as, being a relative to him. Cat's baseball is his very favorite thing to do. He knows a lot of people out there and that is where we celebrated his birthday. We had a hotdog tailgate party with soft drinks and chips, followed by some delicious cookies my brother in law, the chef, made for the festivities. There were cupcakes, too, but I was full by the time we got around to them. My guess is there were 50 or more guests. After we ate we were given a bag of Cracker Jacks with a ticket for the game tied to it.

The mascot for the team is called Dodger, because a very long time ago the Cats were the farm team for the Dodgers. Alas, that is no more. We do not have a major league team associated with the Cats. Dodger is really something. He wears a "furry" suit and dances, runs, and races children around the bases. Last night my brother had the opportunity to drive Dodger onto the field in an antique pickup. It was something my brother really loved. He loves going out there so much he and his wife have season tickets.

The daily whine

It is hot again and hubs and I are going to spend the afternoon catching up on tivoed shows and in general goofing off. We are going out to the Cat's field this evening for my brother's birthday party and to see the game.

Pretty much my vegetable garden is shocked to find out there will be no spring this year. It was cold until after Easter, and now it has jumped straight into summer with 100 degree temps. Tomatoes won't set fruit with temps like that. Oh well, maybe a fall garden. The squash is blooming and we got the teepee bean poles up this morning while planting some more plants. I've decided my family is going to have to call for an intervention about my whole plant obsession. *grin*



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Stay in the house

It is a day to stay inside here in Texas. It is wicked hot today and yesterday, too. This special warning from the wunderground website about it.

"A strong upper ridge of high pressure will strengthen over North Texas this week helping to push temperatures slightly above the century mark... particularly over the southern parts of North Texas. The rainfall from last week will only add to the humidity values and will result in heat index values each afternoon between 100 and 105 degrees."

These are the days when we get out outdoor chores done early in the morning and spend the rest of the day in the house, until it cools down in the evening.

It was much like this yesterday when I thought it would be so kind of me to transfer some ferns to the back flowerbed for my husband who was at his parents dealing with some drama over there. While doing my good deed, not only did I nearly have a heat stroke, but my glasses fell off and I couldn't find them.....well, because I didn't have my glasses. I was nearly in tears by the time he got home. He found them almost at once.

Today is the yucky day in the rheumatoid arthritis drug regimen, but so far it has been ok. My daughter called just a while ago to tell her dad that there were some tamales that he needed to get from her apartment for our dinner tonight! She is always thinking of me. *LOL* I may just wait a while....like a day or two and not press my luck today.

My knitting group was so fun last night. None of us went to the Knit in Public event this past Saturday, because it was in the 90s and we ain't stoopid. Anyway...we knit in public every Monday evening inside where it is cool or warm depending on the right season and we can eat and have a soft drink. People come by our table and chat with us, we tell them to bring their yarn and join us next week or any Monday evening. Last night a very sweet elderly (well, older than us) gentleman watched us for a good long while as we laughed and told our stories and knitted. He listened and asked the lady who was closest to him what she was making. She told him and he was so nice and told us what a good example we were. He said all kinds of nice things about our knitting and having such a good time. It may have brought back memories of his mother or wife and her friends knitting together.

Underwater Cat

I saw this on tv this weekend and just shook my head. I thought our cats liked water, but they can't hold a candle to this one!

My 301st Post It

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It has been a very busy day and I'm to tired to write anything tonight and we are going to the Cat's game tonight with a bunch of people.

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: Games People Play

It’s Saturday 9 time. I would like to send a big thank you to Crazy Sam at Saturday 9 for hosting this meme. It’s fun and relatively easy. To read the other participants entries or to participate yourself, click the link just mentioned or the picture above. The rules are simple:

What we’ve committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do “random questions,” so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don’t have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today’s meme!

I actually stole this from Thom after I saw it at Melli's.

1. What was your favorite active game as a child? Red Rover

2. What was your favorite board game as a child?
Monopoly or dominoes I guess dominoes isn't really a board game, but it taught me to add.

3. Tell us about a friend you played these games with in your youth.
My best friend back then was Jan Mayo and we played together most everyday for several years, then she moved.

4. What is your favorite card game?
Canasta...my mother and I used to play during the hot Texas summer afternoons. I have a lot of really good memories of that.

5. What board games do you enjoy now?
My husband and I don't really play board games, but we did give Trouble a run last winter.

6. Do you play video games? Which ones?
We hardly ever play video games . I like Bejeweled, but I'm not sure that is a video game. We sort of lost interest while playing "Myst" ages ago.

7. Tell us about the friends you play games with now.
My husband is my game player opponent now. Sometimes my grandson will play Trouble with me.

8. Do you play any sports now?
No...alas I've gotten a little old and stiff.

9. What’s your favorite sport to watch?
I enjoy some baseball, some NASCAR, and when sailing, equestrian jumping events, surfing ,or golf are on...I do enjoy watching them. Not so much from start to finish, but in and out.

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And you make it as entertaining as possible. You may be guilty of over-sharing a bit on your blog, but you can't help it. Your life is truly an open book. Or in this case, an open blog!

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

Gordon Strikes Again...oh the trauma

Ok...after our trip to Wal-Mart Central Market our local grocery store I settled on the sofa to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of water, while watching Gordon Ramsey's "F Word" (where F stands for food) cooking show. He started with that stone thing again. I have put a stone to pounds calculator on the sidebar of this page for ease of reference. There was a young lady who was cooking with him and she was telling him at one time she weighed 5.5 to 6 stone. That is 77 to 83 pounds! Anorexic much? I'm pretty sure one of my legs weighs at least that much....maybe if you kept the buttock part on, but I don't really want to find out.

I'd be so lost if we had to move to Europe. In England we could sort of speak the language, but would be lost with the metric and stone system.

Then he showed a man dealing with an eel. He said that eels aren't eaten in Great Britain that much anymore, and they ship the excess eels to Holland...were I've heard everyone is stoned most of the time since they can legally purchase whatever sort of drug that suits their fancy at the corner shop. But, that is a whole 'nuther kind of stone. Gordon had an Oriental chef demonstrate how to dispatch the eel by driving a knife through its head and then cutting the head off and then splitting the eel from stem to stern. Its little heart was still beating after all that beheading and slicing open. Then, for cripesake the Oriental chef told Gordon and some other guy in the kitchen to swallow the beating heart, followed with a bowl of water. Gordon deferred to the other guy. It was a very surreal moment for me to see the eel heart beating with nothing at all in the way of parts around it being swallowed whole. I'll probably never go to Holland, either after that...They might put an eel heart on my plate or something *shiver and shudder*. I'm certain I would never knowingly put eel on my plate. And before seeing this cooking show I had no hard feelings toward eating eels.

However in Gordon Ramsey's defense, he did have a lady on the show who tries to get farmers to treat their other farm animals such as pigs and cattle humanely and not put them in small cages like they do in the factories in Europe. I'm pretty sure there may be nightmares for me tonight.

Gordon Ramsey is raising two grand pigs in his back yard and he treats them very well. Bet his neighbors are sort of not all THAT happy about the urban farm next door from them. Never the less, Gordon's pigs are very happy in their pen with plenty to eat and time to play and sleep comfortably, and he feeds them apples and good pig chow. I've already seen the show where he has the pigs slaughtered and hung. His point in doing this is so people, and in particular, his children will know where the meat they have for meals comes from. The kids were fine with it after the pigs were sent to pig heaven. They were pretty giggly about the tail tasting, though. They used every bit of those pigs and they were served to his customers in the restaurant. At least those pigs got to keep their tails. The piglets reared on the industrial farms have their tails docked, because there isn't enough room in the pens and they bite the other piglets' tails off for something to do or maybe for fun. Who knows. That was pretty disturbing. I wonder if it would be a good idea for me to think about going organic as far as meat is concerned. I'm not even going to tell you about the neutering of the little pigs. Gave Gordon the willies...for sure.

After reading about Bossy's week long cleanse and super poo, I thought I was up for anything, but I think that was bravado on my part after seeing this show. Maybe I'll become like Melli and Quilly and just go without tv from now on.

Oh Man! The weather radio just went off and we are in another tornado watch tonight....and when they got back to the regular weather they were talking about the temperatures and the heat indices. Our heat index is 104, I think. The barometer is very low right now...indicating the possibility of storms. The other night's storms were the 3rd worst in Texas weather recorded history. Thousands are still without electricity. Good news for Home Depot, though. Thank goodness it was around us, and didn't come here. We just got a lot of wind. It was close to my son's home, but he is ok. I think slightly shaken, but fine. My dil and grandson are in Georgia to visit her folks.

This is the reason I cannot give up TV. Reality is just so...well, funny mostly.





If the video link doesn't work here is the direct link: http://tv.yahoo.com/daytime

It is coming again!....looking for my water wings!

Wunderground and our local weather say it is coming again! aie aie aie

Here are some pictures from my local NBC affiliate

Some parts around here got nearly 9" of rain, and we got only 1.7" at my house.

Melli, I'm so sorry about your plants. It will dry out soon.

Building an Ark

Last night, unknown to the weather forecasters apparently, it started to RAIN...and it rained. During the night the thunder woke me. This time I did get up and look at several of our local weather channels. We take our weather very seriously and there on my cable provider we have, The Weather Channel, and two other channels devoted entirely to Ft. Worth weather, and then there are the regular channels like NBC, ABC, Fox...well, you get the idea. There was a large red concentration of storms right over the Ft. Worth-Dallas area. I figured it would blow through pretty quickly and went back to bed. At least it didn't show a tornado like we had seen trying to form earlier in the evening. That was a scary sight and very unwelcome to the people who lived where it was. Anyway, back to my story, when I woke this morning we had no electricity at all, but they got it back on in about 3 hours or so. It has been pouring rain again all morning and is still raining in Dallas. This is so weird, because usually when we hit June the rain is over until October or so. Wunderground has updated their site to show we have a chance of rain pretty much the rest of the week. Also, they are predicting the temperature to be 99 degrees on Saturday. I hadn't really planned to go really early to the Knit in Public thing, but may be changing my mind. Heck, I knit in public every Monday night with my knitting group.

Hope your evening was calmer than ours...and drier, too.

The Redneck and the Game Warden

A redneck was stopped by a game warden in Southern Texas recently with two ice chests full of fish. He was leavin' a cove well-known for its fishing.

The game warden asked the man, 'Do you have a license to catch those fish?' 'Naw, sir', replied the redneck. 'I ain't got none of them there licenses. You must understand, these here are my pet fish'

'Pet fish?'

'Yeah. Every night, I take these here fish down to the lake and let 'em swim 'round for awhile. Then, when I whistle, they jump right back into these here ice chests and I takes 'em home.'

'That's a bunch of hooey! Fish can't do that.'

The redneck looked at the warden for a moment and then said, 'It's the truth Mr.. Government Man. I'll show ya. It really works.' 'O. K.', said the warden. 'I've got to see this!'

The redneck poured the fish into the lake and stood and waited. After several minutes, the warden says, 'Well?'

'Well, what?,' says the redneck.

The warden says, 'When are you going to call them back?'

'Call who back?'

'The FISH,' replied the warden!

'What fish?,' replied the redneck. ...........

Moral of the story: We may not be as smart as some city slickers, but we ain't as dumb as some of them liberal government employees

You can say what you want about the South, but you never hear of anyone retiring and moving north.



Well, it lifted my spirits this afternoon. Hope it works for you, too.

How Crayons Are Made

Your Vocabulary Score: A-

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

I have no idea which one I missed on this quiz!

The Joy of Home Ownership

Ahh...the joys of having a pool to go along with your home! So far we haven't been in the pool this year. Hubby has had a new filter installed, because the other one just wasn't working properly anymore. He is at the pool store right now to get a new motor and guts for the thing. They said it would be Tuesday before they could get out to replace what ain't werkin' now. Pools are truly a money suck, but are nice when you have teenagers. That was a while back!

When it is working properly it is a beautiful blue and looks so cooling and inviting when there are enough chemicals in it. Otherwise it looks like a toxic dump. Which is why I was hoping the pool fixers could get out sooner....like before the yellow green algae starts growing. Bless my sweet husband...he has so much on his plate these days.

Ah Dude....

Oh my gosh...there is going to be a Big Lebowski Fest!! It will be a celebration of all things related to The Dude and everything in the movie. They will be having the festivities in Austin October 9th and 10th.

There is now a huge following of the "cult" movie "The Big Lebowski". I know I have watched it several times and I've even told my husband to have me cremated when I die and not to waste any money, but to use a Folgers can instead of an urn. *LOL* It is the 8th anniversary of the celebration. The movie, "The Big Lebowski" was made in 1998, but the fests started 8 years ago.
There are SO many extremely hilarious scenes in this movie that I'm thinking it may have a showing tonight at my house. The movie was on cable one night and I kept hearing parts of it as I passed back and forth through the family room....also, could hear my husband laughing. This movie is not for everyone, but is one of the all time best movies ever made.

Oh the thought of all the funny quotes, the nihilists, Maude, and Bunny, white Russians...and all the rest of the company. Yes...it is going to be a pizza and movie night.

Duff Goldman, of "Ace of Cakes" on The Food Channel made a huge cake for a Lebowski Fest celebration. He is one of my favorites, too. He came back to Baltimore in 2000 after training under many well known chefs. His shop is called Charm City Cakes. Duff and the people who work for him are so outrageous and talented. I'd love to have a cake from there. Melli, the shop is close to you...at least it is in your state.

On second thought...most of the people who read my blog should NOT watch this movie. It has pretty rough language. But it is so freakin' funny.

That is all from me for tonight. Yesterday, I guess I thought I'd been cured of this wicked arthritis and went grocery shopping,worked in the yard planting stuff, and even at the height of my insanity moved some of the stones that line the flower beds. Shall we say last night was sort of uncomfortable? Yeah...we can say that and today was pretty awful, too....and now I'm heading for the sofa and heating pad/ice packs and anything I can find for pain. Not good for fingers or backs when you are an idiot and lift heavy stuff.

Proverbs

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Busy day cleaning again. Want to get it done so I can read later this afternoon when it will be hotter than you know.

We went to our minor league league baseball game. Our team is The Fort Worth Cats, and they are the best! It was a very pleasant evening visiting with my sister on her birthday at the game and then our team won! Life was very good.

World Wide Knit in Public Days

On May 13th and 14th and again on the 20th and 21st there will be a World Wide Knit In Public event. Mine will be held in Fort Worth at the Kimbell art Museum from dawn 'til dusk. If you are a knitter and would like to join the fun, you can find your kip from this url http://www.wwkipday.com/ It truly is World Wide. Just think....women all over the world knitting and getting to know their neighbors...well, the women sitting around you wherever your kip is held. That sounds like so much fun. Women from Ravelry will be having an online knit, I think.

I belong to a knitting group that meets every Monday at a local bakery/sandwich shop and we have a lot of fun. Ladies stop by our table to chat and we welcome them to bring their knitting and join us. I've only been with them since December '08, but this group has been together for 7 years. I've met some very fine women through knitting. Last fall I attended a trunk show of hand dyed yarn by Madeline Tosh at Jennings Street Yarn. Ms. Tosh has some lovely yarn and a great selection of sock yarn. Actually she has more sock yarn than worsted, but the colors are delightful. Linda, the owner of Jennings Street Yarn, has lots of classes, lots and lots of great yarns, and a friendly atmosphere.

This year we lost one of the few yarn shops in Ft. Worth when Yarns Ewenique closed. One of the owner's husband's job required him to live in California and she finally gave in and moved out there. It was a sad time during the closing, except for the great bargains in yarn and knitting needles. They will be missed. It was a very nice shop.

Jennings St. Yarn has classes going a lot of the time. I want to learn how to knit socks, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I've had some health issues that may prevent me from knitting in the future, but then again the meds may work and it will all be good. I found out in May that I have rheumatoid arthritis. The reason you don't see me much on Tuesdays is the meds I take make me pretty sick that day. However, yesterday wasn't too bad. Soon I'll be down at JSY or with my group knitting away on a pair of socks.

Anyway, if you are interested the dates are on the weekends and you would be a part of a world wide convergence of women. Find your knitting in public place and join in.

One of those days

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And I missed my 1 year anniversary on May 28th. It has been a fun year and it has been great getting to know ya. Maybe it will just keep on getting better.